it remains to be seen how much judge Stein's ruling on the speech or debate clause could undermine the case being laid out by prosecutors before the ruling prosecutors called the evidence critical to the trial but experts on the Constitutional Clause say it's not so cut and dry here to explain is Stan brand a former councel to the House of Representatives who's argued his share of speech or debate cases Stan brand thanks so much for joining me I think the question on every one's mind is how much does this judge's decision poke a hole in Prosecutor's case well certainly it impacts at least one portion of what he was charged with was this scheme to uh put a hold on military aid to Egypt you know in return for these supposed gifts um you know it's going to make it very difficult for the government to go forward with that set of allegations if they can't show the jury what he actually did but right now I'm not sure how the government can remedy this uh prohibition on using these official acts these legislative acts against the senator well so clarify for me then when it comes to speech or debate Clauses the the prosecutors can talk about alleged promises but they cannot share the legislative acts that were taken clarify that for us yeah that's a bit of a mental gymnastics exercise that the Supreme Court has created really in the case law uh and so the the illegal act is the agreement the bribe the quidd proquo but the problem is you can't show what the member of Congress actually did in the legislative sphere and juries by and large when they retire to consider these cases they want to see well did did the official actually carry through on the promise even though the promise itself is a crime and you don't have to have uh followed through on it but juri's as a practical matter oftentimes will say well he he didn't do anything so we're not going to convict yeah so when we're talking about a Litany of text messages phone records emails things like that that's all off the table there's this argument Stan about whether or not this gives immunity to lawmakers in terms of you know being held accountable what's your position on that well I've been at this for 50 years if you look in the case books you'll find all kinds of decisions by the court upholding convictions of members of Congress um they routinely are convicted uh even where the courts bar use of this evidence so the notion that somehow this gives them a free get out of jail card for everything they do uh is just not the case if the judge had decided to allow this uh evidence to be permissible would that have given Menendez grounds to appeal I mean it sounds like this would have been mucked up regardless yes totally and there are many many cases where the government has been allowed by District judges to present this evidence and there's been a reversal on appeal and so what this judge has done is saved the government from its uh own uh you know zealotry in a way by saying well I'm not going to let you put this evidence in and it's a pretty clear-cut case now the other problem with this is why does the government continue to step into this hornet nest I've never been able to answer that question particularly where they have a pleora of other evidence that they can use that doesn't trench on immunity what do you mean by that when you call it a hornet nest well just for example in this case they're now there's now a hole in their case at least this part of their case they could have avoided that by not charging legislative acts they still would have had enough to pursue the case um but they over they always overreach and put themselves in the position to have these challenges made Stan brand is the former Council for the house of represent resentative Stan thanks so much for your expertise here you're welcome [Music]